Genders of first born children on TV shows; a question and a observation.
It's been bothering me for years that whenever a TV show does their first full "Pregnancy" storyline (especially in the last decade) the resulting child is almost ALWAYS a boy. It reached the point when I shouted "BOY!" at the screen during How I met Your Mother when they were discussing what the kids gender would be.
Sure the second kid born on the show could be either a boy or a girl...but that first kid needs to have that Y chromosome. This is only applicable if it's a longterm storyarc and the baby's birth is shown (or gets an episode devoted to it...basically a "cast crowding around the new baby, usually in the hospital room" scene)
I'm trying to either prove or disprove this, maybe I'm just watching the wrong shows? Maybe it's a coincidence only applying to the shows I watch? So I ask the group: How many pregnancy storylines (the first time the show features a pregnancy...not the pregnancy of a different or same character on the same show in a later season) end up with a female child being born?
So far, in the shows I have actually watched, I can only think of Glee (Beth), Star Trek DS9 (Molly O'Brien), The Office (Cecilia) and Battlestar Galactica (Hera)...compared to around 20 shows where the resulting offspring was a boy.
Posted Jul 10, 2012, 4:50 AM UTC · edited